Brian Jones was the archetypal 1960s pop star - brilliantly gifted, fantastically glamorous and dead before 30. Rob Driscoll spoke to Leo Gregory, the Welsh-born actor playing him in a new film

With his genial, south London, "alright, mate" tones, it's something of a shock to learn that actor Leo Gregory, who stars as doomed pop guru Brian Jones in controversial new biopic Stoned, was born and bred in Wales.

It's definitely a touch of the Christian Bales. Like the Batman Begins star, Gregory had a peripatetic childhood that started in West Wales, the product of parents in drifting professions, and he's a bit misty with the actual details.

"I was born just outside Milford Haven. My parents had moved down there, they had a company where they would trawl and get spider crabs," he says, somewhat enigmatically, between plenty of "ums" and "ers".

"They had a fish plant, I guess, and then they had a restaurant-bistro in Milford Haven.

"I have very vague memories, but I was there a few years - long enough to learn how to count to five in Welsh! I went to school very early on in Haverfordwest, but then we moved to the south coast of England," - again, like one Mr Bale - "to Bognor Regis, near where my grandparents lived, and later on to London."

Today, the good-looking and personable Gregory is very much a star in the making; Stoned should do it. As Jones, the founding member of The Rolling Stones who was found drowned in his swimming pool in 1969, he's the best thing in a (perhaps necessarily) heady and over-reaching study of fact-blurred Swinging Sixties hedonism.

Jones, with his blond, ambiguous glamour and denounced posh background, swiftly became the face of the '60s revolution, resplendent in the sumptuous fabrics and furs, scarves and jewellery, with which he fearlessly blurred the distinction, pre-Bowie, between male and female boundaries.

Yet at the age of 27 - the age that Leo Gregory reaches next month - he was dead in the deep end of the pool at Cotchford Farm, his East Sussex retreat and former home of Winnie the Pooh author AA Milne (whom Jones revered).

Officially, he drowned by misadventure under the influence of drink and drugs. But the film takes up the strong body of circumstantial evidence which suggests that a minder called Frank Thorogood (played by Paddy Considine) drowned him, later confessing to the murder on his deathbed.

"It's not really a Who Killed Brian Jones? movie, it's more about capturing the essence of his persona, and those times," says Gregory, who was required to take a crash course in the Stones, immersing himself in video footage, albums, photographs and guitar lessons before cameras rolled.

"There's not that much footage of Brian to study. Performance- wise, of course, there's plenty - but there's minimal dialogue footage, partly due to the era, and partly down to the fact that when they were getting bigger, their manager Andrew Loog-Oldham wanted to keep Brian to the periphery; he wanted to protect his talent."

Gregory freely admits he'd never heard of Jones before he was offered the role.

"My musical preference for most of my life has been very different," he smiles.

"I've said, give me two decks and a microphone, and I'd be as happy as Larry. All the rock stuff, guitars, was really foreign.

"In terms of the Stones, I would have possibly known Satisfaction, or You Can't Always Get What You Want, whereas my mum was ecstatic when I got the part.

"She liked the Stones and the Beatles, but I think she was more of a Jethro Tull and The Who kind of girl. She's seen Stoned and it's the favourite thing of mine she's seen - even with all the nudity and drug-taking."

Gregory started acting young - 13, in fact, when he grabbed a part in an American TV mini-series, Jewels. Then came work on British television, like the sitcom The Upper Hand.

"Then my school stopped me doing it. I parted company with my school and kind of went out into the big wide world," he says, hinting at a non-conformist teenage existence.

Later, he did some work with gritty TV documentary-and- film-maker Dominic Savage, who made Nice Girl, the acclaimed South Wales drama of disaffected young lives.

"Dominic is amazing. The two films I've done with him, When I Was 12 and Out of Control, were entirely improvised, which I personally love," enthuses Gregory. "It's real and spontaneous and exciting. Dominic and I are going to do another project together."

Most recently, Gregory's been seen as a West Ham football hooligan alongside Elijah Wood in Green Street, but Stoned will catapult him into a different stratosphere of fame.

He came quite late to the project, the directorial debut of renowned British film producer Stephen Woolley, who has been attached to its development for some 10 years.

"I'd just come back from New Zealand, where I was making a vampire movie, Perfect Creature, and then I was in America doing some publicity for Green Street, when I was sent the Stoned script, about this guy I'd never heard of," says Gregory.

"But as soon as I read it, I knew I wanted it. I came on board just a few weeks before filming started, and I had to immerse myself in everything Brian, and the Stones. I had three one-hour lessons on the guitar - I'd never picked up a guitar in my life. So it was very crazy. If I'd had time to cack myself, I would have done."

The preparation experience is something Gregory looks back on with mixed feelings.

"On the one hand, it was enjoyable, learning about this amazing man, and learning about such a fantastic era," he muses. "But at the same time, there's that added responsibility-stroke-pressure that you're playing a real person, and the Brian Jones fan club is very much alive and kicking.

"My first kind of loyalty, I guess, was to Stephen - it's been his baby for such a long time. But there are people around still who knew Brian, and there are family members.

"So it wasn't entirely this big freedom of expression - there was a sense of getting it right.

"At the same time, there's nothing more annoying that watching a bunch of people impersonating famous people. So it's more about the essence and the spirit of the person."

The story begins with Jones in his mid-teens, an intelligent Cheltenham lad who excels in music and girls as wholeheartedly as he resists the disciplines of grammar school.

Moving to London at 19, Jones finds fame and fulfilment as he steers The Rolling Stones to their first great musical successes, but it's a short-lived happiness.

Stoned recreates that nightmare as it plummets out of control, with the fragile, increasingly unpredictable Jones hounded by the authorities, busted for drugs, and embroiled in indiscriminate sexual encounters; violently besotted with his great love, Anita Pallenberg, who abandons him for Keith Richard; and finally fired by the band he had formed and obsessively nurtured to their coming of age.

So, what does Leo Gregory make of the man he portrays?

"There were certainly things I loved about him," he says. "He was immensely talented and creative.

"On the one hand, he could be the most affable, loveable, charismatic peacock, but in the blink of an eye he could become the biggest s*** you'd come across. He'd take great delight in ripping you to pieces.

"Ultimately, I'm not going to say I love everything about the man, but yes, he was a great guy, and quite misunderstood - possibly by himself more than anyone else. I don't think he knew why he did the things he did, or their repercussions."

Gregory puts a lot of Jones's problems down to an unloving, unstable childhood.

"He wasn't nurtured in a way that parenting skills allow now - we're talking about the '50s," he says.

"It was very stiff-upper-lip, seen and not heard; you spoke only when you were spoken to. A character like Brian needed all the time and care and extra love, which wasn't typical of the '50s."

And his next film, the one he shot in New Zealand, could not be more different.

Perfect Creature, due out in 2006, is a big-budget vampire thriller from Peter Jackson's production company, in which he and Dougray Scott both play blood- sucking children of the night.

"It's a different take on the genre. The vampires and humans co-exist, and the vampires are almost like a religious institution," he explains. "It's very dark, stylish and worrying.

"My character gets a disease very much like Ebola, which eats him up from the inside."

So, a career is very much on the go, and already Gregory has plans in other areas. He's writing a script with his close pal Rafe (son of Timothy) Spall, with a view to filming it next year.

And as for keeping in with the Wales of his roots? "I was back in Wales recently, for the England- Wales football game in Cardiff, but I'm afraid I was supporting England," he laughs.

"I am proud of my Welsh background, though.

"I'm friendly with Ioan Gruffudd; we share the same agent. And I was going to do a film with Rhys Ifans, a World War One drama called Truce, but it got put back 12 months. I'd still love to do it. Working with Rhys? That would be well cool..."

BRIAN JONES was more than just "a Rolling Stone". He was their founding member in 1962 - their leader, their visionary, their most gifted musician, while his blond, ambiguous glamour and obvious talent inspired enormous curiosity.

Jones was the face of the Sixties revolution, a true pied piper of fashion and social mores. Born in Cheltenham, in a well-to-do family, he moved to London at 19, finding fame and fulfilment as he met and steered his fellow Rolling Stones to their first great musical successes. But it was a short-lived happiness.

His final days were played out at Cotchford Farm, his East Sussex retreat. Still monitored by the Stones' management, who regarded him as a loose cannon, Jones decided to do some home improvements and hired builder and gardener Frank Thorogood for the work.

Just 27, Jones was found dead in his swimming pool. Officially, he drowned by misadventure under the influence of drink and drugs. The film Stoned challenges that theory, and in doing so could land its makers in court.

Stephen Woolley's film says Jones was killed by Thorogood, a theory based on the testimony of two female witnesses who were at Jones's mansion that night.

Thorogood died in 1993 but his daughter is considering legal action over the claims in the film.

Woolley said, " I based everything I knew on the testimony of people who were there.

The premiere at the Apollo cinema on Regent Street in London attracted a celebrity crowd, but not the remaining Stones, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards or Charlie Watts. (Bill Wyman has left the group).